242 Themes/Vocab

Enlightenment

An 18th-century transatlantic movement based on the belief that reason, rational order, and public conversation would lead to the perfection of human societies

Public Sphere

The social and political space idealized during the Enlightenment where public discussion and rational debate took place

Romanticism

A global artistic movement (~1790s-1850s) marked by an ambivalence about reason, a focus on nonhuman nature, attention to solitude, and a valuing of sensation and feeling as access points to truth

Transcendentalism

An American offshoot of Romanticism that emphasized Idealism, individualism, and the spirituality of Nature

The Sublime

An important 18th-19th century aesthetic term (advanced by Burke and Kant) describing a feeling of awe and horror that produces a "negative pleasure" by overwhelming the mind

Detective Fiction

A genre that prioritizes reason, where the detective reads signs, and the story ends with the mystery solved and a return to order

Horror Fiction

A genre that prioritizes feelings (sensation), where signs impose themselves on characters, and the story often ends without resolving the mystery

Intertextuality

The mixing together of past elements in new ways

the concept that a text is composed of past texts, showing how the old circulates in the new, often challenging the Myth of Romantic Genius

Doubling

A key thematic element where characters, motifs, or actions are mirrored, such as the relationship between Victor Frankenstein and the Creature

Fragmented Selves

A theme exploring Romantic Subjectivity that presents a view of the self as internally divided, often driven by subconscious desires and contradictions

Posthuman

A mode of personhood (represented by the Creature) in which technology and nature mix, distinct from the purely biological model of the human

Gender Binaries of Enlightenment Modernity

The Enlightenment's division of the world and nature into rigid categories like Feminine (Passive, Domestic, Emotion) and Masculine (Active, Public, Reason)

Contraries

William Blake's concept that his form, rhythms, and images push readers to recognize opposing forces to admit the world's complexity

Natural Rights / Universal Human Rights

The argument (by Wollstonecraft) that rights are inherent to all rational creatures and independent of custom or tradition

Prescription

The concept (advanced by Burke) that political order and rights are inherited through tradition and custom, not abstract reason

Critical Fabulation

A method used by writers to address gaps in the 18th-century archives, which were often incomplete due to the systemic exclusion of Black voices

Marronage

The practice of enslaved people escaping and forming independent settlements